Julie Smithers of Tellus discusses the company's $220,000 donation to JDRF and a wireless blood-sugar monitoring system developed by University Health Network and Mount Sinai Hospital. The Bluetooth-enabled glucometer sends readings to a BlackBerry and secure website, letting doctors see real-time alerts without patients manually uploading data multiple times daily.
Welcome back. Tellus has helped to develop new technology to allow people to monitor their blood sugar levels wirelessly with a BlackBerry. They're also doing their bit to help the cause of juvenile diabetes with their annual skins golf tournament that just wrapped up yesterday. And here to tell us all about it is Julie Smithers from Tellus. Julie, good to have you with us again.
Thank you, David. Great to see you.
And you were at the skins game.
I was. I was up in—
My family won.
He did. He did an amazing job. All the players were fantastic. It was a great event. Raised actually more than— sorry, About $220,000.
A million would be great. $220,000 is great.
It was $220,000 for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.
Okay. And now, so Tellus has formally aligned itself. I mean, you could be with all sorts of different charitable causes, but coming out of this tournament, which is a world-renowned tournament we might add, you've picked juvenile diabetes.
That's one of our charities, definitely. Since about 2001, we've donated $91 million in in-kind financial assistance to a number of different charities and not-for-profit organizations across Canada.
We've got some video, I think, of both of the tournament and some of the things we're going to talk about.
Yeah, exactly. While up at the tournament, we showcased a technology that's been developed by the University Health Network along with Mount Sinai Hospital. It enables patients to— this is Alexis Sunderland. She's actually the youth spokesperson for JDRF. And the technology now enables people to upload their Their blood sugar levels up to a BlackBerry using Bluetooth technology. Here she is showing it off. It's very simple to use.
Okay, so if without this and she wanted to go to this tournament, she'd have to be able to somehow get to a landline computer.
Right. As it is now, definitely patients would have to about 4 times a day be at their computer to upload their test results to To show how their parent— their physicians what their levels are. As you can see, it just uploads right there. It goes directly at the same time to a secure website where the physicians can access. If there is any kind of sign of an issue, the physicians can then, you know, alert the appropriate caregivers that there is a problem.
This is just amazing when you think of the freedom that this would give, especially, well, in the case of juvenile diabetes, a young active person who wants to be young and active.
Certainly. It's very, very A time-saving technology, you know, the cases where clients, patients would have to go into the hospital will likely reduce. At this time, it is just in trial and not commercially available to patients at this time, though.
Right, but that's— you got to start somewhere.
You do, and through wireless technology, I mean, so many areas in healthcare are benefiting.
Here's the big check.
There is the big check.
$220K.
Yes.
Everyone knows what that means.
And there's Mr. Daley and the rest of the players and the kids from JDRF. That is so neat.
Of course, John Daley, Just pounded the ball in one shot there off the tee, 385 yards to the green.
Incredible. They are just fantastic players. It was a great event. They are all really supportive of the charity.
Tell us about the notion of aligning yourself with BlackBerry. It's become such a ubiquitous product. It's just absolutely everywhere. So that has to help with this process by being familiar with people. It's not like you're not introducing an alien technology.
It is a very simple-to-use technology that people are accustomed to. The test process is really just what they would do now, and the Bluetooth technology is so seamless, using it with a BlackBerry is so easy to do.
So it would actually go— what would the sequence be? From the test device, Bluetooth to the BlackBerry, BlackBerry to the doctor?
To the wireless webpage that is securely protected by password.
So how did you guys come up with this idea in the first place?
Well, we can't really take the credit. It's the University Health Network and Mount Sinai. Putting hours of wonderful research time in, and it's just essentially wireless technology making— helping make people's lives easier, helping improve the quality of life for people with diabetes.
And I guess in truth, I mean, that's the extension of cell phones and BlackBerrys. I mean, it is that logical extension. I mean, it starts off as convenience and then perhaps security and business, and now moving into health. And then changing lives. I guess the applications therefore, you could take it further. I mean, you could So you could take secured information in terms of any health-related issue to your physician if you, if you needed to.
This does actually offer other patients with, for example, hypertension, could also use the technology. But again, the sky's the limit for the use of technology in healthcare, and we're really excited to work directly with organizations.
Well, Julie, hats off to everyone involved in this great innovation. We'll look forward to hearing more as it moves through the test process.
We'll keep you up to date.
Okay, thanks for being with us.
Thank you, David.
Time for a quick break here on Homepage. Coming up though, real life versus virtual worlds. Plus, Amber MacArthur finds out just how much time Canadians are logging online. The
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